social media

Thrivent Financial, Mayo Clinic, Target Corporation, and General Mills, just a few of the great organizations students in the Full-time UST MBA class of 2014 interned with this last summer. 97% of this year’s full-time MBA cohort completed an internship. Business cards were shared, happy hours attended, but days in the office are turning into days in the classroom. This should signify a shift in thought for many, but each student can now apply many new business practices learned through direct experience.

The skills you gain in an internship can be be what sets you apart from the rest in applying for a post-MBA job. In order to capitalize on that though there is a lot to do during the school year. Below is a quick to-do list to ensure you fully utilize the experiences you had this summer.

Pursuing a masters in business communications (technically an MBC) has been one of the most impactful moves I’ve made in my life. The spark you get from sitting in a classroom and collaborating with your classmates (or finishing your homework just in time) is unmatched in the workplace setting. At St. Thomas, MBA and MBC students often share classes, allowing me to learn alongside and from working professionals much different than me – engineers, accountants, HR benefits managers and medical device sales reps. Continue Reading

A year before they graduated from the University of St. Thomas, Emily Pritchard ’11 and Martha McCarthy ’11 were guaranteed millionaires – in the eyes of a fellow entrepreneur, at least. As the only undergraduates, and the only women, to make it to the finals of the Fowler Business Concept Challenge in 2009, Pritchard and McCarthy’s concept for SnapSystem Bikes won rave reviews from one of the judges, who was so impressed by the uniqueness of the idea and the professionalism of their presentation, he felt sure he could make them millionaires. Continue Reading

Linkedin, Facebook, Friendster, Pinterest, Instagram, Myspace, the options for social media networks and social media sharing are endless. The fast pace of today’s society demands instantaneous information, recognition, and responses. For job seekers, a typical rejection or acceptance from an employer can take weeks, or even months, or elicit no response at all. Connecting with companies and colleagues is quite simple with the help of Linkedin and Facebook. Some users have a small city in their virtual rolodex, and unfortunately each user is typically out of touch with his or her network. As social media options continue to multiply, and as webs of connections continue to expand, users should begin to contemplate their contribution to the mystic land of social media as well as the contributions made to their own network.

According to social media expert Neal Schaffer of Windmills Marketing, you should have 10 times as many connections as your age. For the typical graduate student, that should be between 250-400 professional connections. This number excludes friends and family, which according to Facebook is a mean of 100 people, but in actuality 84% of users have more than this. These 350-500 people do not include the user’s Twitter or Pinterest followers, as well as their possible blog readers. To view this population on a rather small scale, a single person’s online presence could be viewed by 500 people on any given day, not to mention recruiters on Linkedin, or a simple Google search result showing. If that isn’t overwhelming, I’m not sure what is. Continue Reading

There’s a policy adage that proclaims the world is run by those who show up. In a social media influenced world, it is becoming more about those who “write it up,” regardless of the truth.

Recently an “admirer” of Joel Olsteen from Minneapolis admitted to creating an elaborate Internet persona of the evangelist only to make false claims on his behalf, some of which were published in legitimate media before being debunked. One wonders if the editors at the duped media bothered to apply even a gut test of the claims before running the stories.

The ease with which some social media platforms allow anyone to develop content under assumed identity leads to the potential for great abuse – whether in the name of admiration or something more sinister. Continue Reading

Earlier this week, friend, colleague and fellow blogger Aaron Pearson asked me to speak to his class at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. The topic? Corporate blogging. Something I know a thing or two about based on my personal experiences with this blog and the lessons I’ve put to good use for my clients.

I actually titled my presentation “Is corporate blogging dead?” I hope we all know the answer to that question. And yeah, I was having a little fun with the title. But, the fact remains that 28 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a public blog. Not a bad number. Especially considering we’re talking about the biggest of the big. What about the thousands of other blogs from midsized and small businesses out there? No doubt, those numbers are fairly large.

Finding available employment opportunities has become much easier than that of the days where scouring the Classifieds was the only option. As there are several websites to choose from, some more reliable than others, it may be best to devise a process to your search. Designating days for specific websites, as well as tasks such as revamping resumes, networking and updating social media platforms should all be part of a daily and weekly process for the engaged job seeker. The University of St. Thomas offers two Tommie specific websites geared toward their graduate and undergraduate students that house thousands of “Tommie” employment opportunities, but there are also several other notable websites for job seekers to check out.

With more than 50 million unique visitors and 1 billion job searchers per month, Indeed claims to be the top job site worldwide. The free site gives job seekers access to millions of job listings aggregated from thousands of company websites and job boards across all fields. Not sure where to start when looking for a job on such a robust site? Indeed has a list of tips to help you in your search, such as how to narrow or broaden your hunt, what abbreviations to use, and how to use complex phrases within the search field. If you don’t want to search the site every day, you can set up job alerts to arrive daily in your inbox. As of February 24, Indeed posted close to 600,000 new jobs in one week.

SimplyHired

Search engine company SimplyHired says it’s working on building the largest online database of jobs. SimplyHired’s search engine pulls listings from thousands of sites across the Web, including job boards, company career sites, newspapers, non-profit organizations, government sites, and more. Users can create an account, which allows them to name, save, and manage searches; manage email alerts; revisit jobs they’ve already viewed; rate and save notes about jobs they’ve viewed; and block specific companies or sites from showing up in their searches. SimplyHired currently has more than 5 million jobs listed from across the Web. Users can browse by state, city, company, industry, or job category.

The site is also a great resource for finding more information about a specific location’s job market. For example, enter Brooklyn, NY and find out basic information about the locale, its job market, the most popular companies offering jobs there, what jobs are the most popular, what industries are hiring, and how the job trends have changed.

LinkedIn

Started from the living room of co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2002,LinkedIn is now the world’s largest professional network on the Internet. There are more than 150 million members in over 200 countries and two new members join every second. Free to use, the site lets members create resume-like profiles—listing work experience, skills, interests, etc.—and then send invitations to others to join their network. Once linked up, a user can view his or her new connection’s network and can quickly form valuable contacts. Users looking for a way into a specific company can search the company’s name to see if they have any connections there. Even if a user doesn’t know an employee directly, he or she may have a mutual contact and can request to be introduced. LinkedIn also functions as a job board where employers post openings and users can apply.

So you found a job you’re interested in applying to, but you first want to make sure it’s at a befitting company. Do your research and check out Glassdoor.com, a free career community that gives users an inside look at jobs and companies. What makes the site unique is its “employee generated content,” which includes salaries, company reviews, interview questions, and more—all of which are posted by employees, job seekers, and

even the companies themselves. Thinking about making a career shift from copywriting to PR? Glassdoor lists average salaries for specific positions, so consider that before making a move. Also, as most of us know, it’s always good to have an inside connection at the company to which you’re applying. Thanks to a recently launched feature called Inside Connections, users can sign in using Facebook to see if any of their Facebook friends work at the companies of interest.

Tweet My Jobs

Networking used to be something you had to do face-to-face, but nowadays, social networking has made it possible to connect with an employee or employer across the country. TweetMyJobs works to combine social networking and job hunting by seamlessly integrating the user’s Facebook and Twitter profiles. The services brings recruiters and job hunters together, allowing users to receive highly targeted job matches. Users specify what kind of job they’re looking for and connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Then, TweetMyJobs sends updates about new recommendations by email, mobile phone, or Twitter. TweetMyJobs has over 10,000 custom job channels on Twitter that are tweeting more than 50,000 new jobs each day. The site will also suggest job channels for each user to follow after entering his or her preferences.

Did you know that during the NFL season the average football fan spends 12 hours a week interacting with NFL brands? That goes beyond just watching a game on Sunday, said Minnesota Vikings CMO Steve LaCroix at the Intersections in Brand Marketing event at the Opus College of Business last night. LaCroix was joined by associate professor of marketing John Sailors, Ph.D., for a wide ranging discussion of the marketing challenges and opportunities of the Minnesota Vikings.

A crowd of more than 100 students, faculty and guests attended the discussion and contributed questions to the discussion. Continue Reading

Last week Facebook announced its newest endeavor, recruiting. The Social Jobs Partnership application was released, aggregating over 1.7 million openings from Work4 Labs, BranchOut, Jobvite, DirectEmployers and Monster.com. This implementation allows the job search to be taken one step further by allowing users to apply directly through Facebook and instantly share the jobs to their social network.

Author J.J. Calao of Forbes says, “according to Facebook half of employers in the U.S. use the social network during their hiring process. Of those companies already using Facebook to engage with customers, 54 percent anticipate using it more heavily in their recruitment efforts in the future. Given those numbers, the lucrative nature of the recruitment industry and the success of companies like Work4 Labs—not to mention increasing pressure from battered shareholders—it appears likely that Facebook will seek monetize recruitment efforts at some point soon.” Continue Reading

Editor’s note: The 2012 Fowler Business Concept Challenge is coming up quickly and Opus Magnum will be highlighting a few past winners here over the coming days in hopes of inspiring entries for this year – from both the undergraduate and graduate populations on campus here at UST.

We have posted about the Midwest Tomato Fest a fewtimes and wanted to highlight their presentation at the 2011 Challenge.

Kamal Mohamed wowed judges at the 2011 Fowler Business Concept Challenge with his highly creative business concept, Midwest Tomato Fest. He pitched it as, “A tomato fight to fight hunger,” as the event uses inedible tomatoes and donates a percentage of the proceeds to feeding the hungry. His presentation included some great video clips of the 2011 festival and was full of energy and enthusiasm. Kamal was awarded the third place $2,500 scholarship and the $1,000 best presenter award.